A Fresh Start For the Head and the Heart

It's been a year of transitions! At the start of the year we transitioned back into in-person learning, and as we were getting in the swing of things I had a baby and was out for awhile. Now I'm ready to return and finish the year strong. 

David my son (in his "monobobsled" because we were watching the Winter Olympics), Mike my husband, myself and the newest family member Evelyn.

For seventh grade Individuals and Societies classes we are going to continue with the unit on India, learning about Hinduism, Buddhism and the caste system. 

For all Spanish classes we will be participating in our annual Locura de marzo, a music competition built in a similar way as NCAA's March Madness. All Spanish students at Obama will be voting on these songs to select the school favorite! You can get a sneak peak of the songs in the video below or listen to all of them on this Spotify playlist.

One thing I love about my job is that I'm a student's Spanish teacher for a few consecutive years (and sometimes even across subjects). This has alleviated at least one challenge of the pandemic because I get to develop a relationship and leverage the strengths of my students. I also know what I taught them in previous years, and they know my classroom expectations. I wanted to write up a few reminders that will carry over from last year (and probably continue next year as well). 

• Schoology will be updated with folders for each week. 
• There is a Week at a glance document that will contain important information about goals for each lesson, links to assignments, directions for missed/make up work and due dates. This should be the place students and parents go to answer questions like What did I miss? and I'm going to be out what do I need to do? 
• In Home Access Center (HAC), in the description of the assignment, I will reference the folder on Schoology where the work/directions can be found. 
• In general, work for the previous week will be due the following Monday. For example, work assigned the week of March 7th - 11th needs to be turned in by 7:30am Monday March 14th. (This gives students time to get it to me during homeroom.) 
• Please review the Welcome Letter posted in Schoology for information about grade categories and the late work policy.

While I am so grateful for the time I got to spend with my family, my passion is teaching, and I'm excited to return to the classroom and work with my students.